Cricket match-fixing investigations gone wrong: part 1 – setting up a fix with Indian middleman Aneel Munawar
The BBC’s ‘Panorama’ team tries to organise a fix with notorious fixer Munawar, who is known to have links to Indian crime gang D Company. The investigation is later taken up by a major English broadsheet newspaper which pushes Munawar to name players.
In 2012, the BBC’s Panorama team, together with a private production company, embarked on a project to uncover corruption in cricket. The trail took them to India, where a man who goes by the name of Aneel Munawar said he had the ability to organise spot-fixing in matches, where the run rate can be doctored over a specified number of overs.
The Panorama investigation subsequently fizzled out and the production company then joined forces with a major UK broadsheet newspaper, which tried to organise a sting on an England player of Asian background.
When that failed, the team turned their attention to a player who had already been banned in the wake of a spot-fixing scandal in the hope that he would help recruit other cricketers. That also ended in tears.
In the first part of the SCMP’s three-part series, we track the Panorama team in their efforts to convince Munawar to name players and how the investigation was eventually taken up by the newspaper.
It was the summer of 2013 and the BBC Panorama team, working with an independent TV production company (TVPC), had spent one year covertly filming meetings with a man going by the name of Aneel Munawar, whom Indian authorities said was a senior member of organised crime group D Company and part of its gambling section based in Dubai.
Munawar was said to be responsible for fixing cricket matches for bookie syndicates under D Company’s control.